iTunes
Version: 8.0
Downloads Count: 107,960
License Type: Free
Price: Free
Date Added: Sep 11, 2008
Operating Systems: Macintosh, Windows XP, Windows Vista
Requirements: 1GHz processor, 512MB RAM, DirectX 9.0-compatible video card with 32MB of video RAM, QuickTime-compatible audio card, XP SP2 or 32-bit Vista
File Size: 66234 KB
Author: Apple
- Windows Movie Maker 1,600,322
- DVD Shrink 1,133,985
- LimeWire Basic 1,035,159
- WinMX 807,935
- DivX Play Bundle v6 490,874
Editorial Review of iTunes
iTunes 8 gives you a fresh way to browse your music, improved accessibility for the vision-impaired, and a new automatic playlist-generation feature dubbed Genius. Judging from my test-drive, the new features are useful, but none are particularly groundbreaking, must-have additions.
ITunes 8's new marquee feature is Genius, which automatically suggests songs based on your selection of a baseline. Genius has two parts, the Genius sidebar and the Genius Playlist tool. If you're a longtime iTunes user, you may notice similarities between Genius and the iTunes Mini Store and Just For You features from iTunes 7 and earlier. You need to turn on Genius before using it; iTunes collects information on your iTunes library, submits it to Apple, and then starts feeding you Genius sidebar results. When you activate Genius, iTunes compares your songs, playlists, and iTunes purchase history against iTunes's offerings and library information from other users to give you the most relevant recommendations.
You may be concerned about sharing your personal library information. Apple says that it collects information "such as track names, play counts, and ratings," but notes that your iTunes library data "will be stored with an anonymous Genius ID and not linked to your iTunes account."
To use the Genius sidebar, select a song. iTunes will give you Genius sidebar results tailored to your selection. The Genius sidebar consists of four parts: the top albums from the selected song's artist, the top songs you don't yet have in your library from that artist, relevant iTunes Essentials collections, and other recommendations based on your selection. This last feature is a welcome feature to me, since I already enjoy using iTunes to find music from artists I'm not familiar with; the Genius sidebar makes that easier for me to do.
The other half of Genius is the Genius playlists function. To create one, select a song and click the Genius atom icon in the lower-right corner of the iTunes window. iTunes then generates a playlist containing songs in your library similar to the song you selected. By default iTunes limits these playlists to 25 songs, though you can create Genius playlists up to 100 songs. I found that Genius generates some pretty accurate playlists. And as Apple notes, Genius should become more accurate as additional playlist information becomes available, though as my colleague Tim Moynihan discovered, it is possible to confuse the iTunes Genius.
Another big enhancement is Grid view, which displays your collection's album covers in a visual grid. Within Grid view, you can sort your music by album, artist, genre, or composer. As you mouse over an album's cover-art tile, a Play button appears. Skim over tiles when sorting by Artist, Genre, or Composer, and the tile will quickly flash the album art for items sorted under each category.
In my experience, this arrangement made it easier to locate music quickly--if you want to listen to a certain album, you can use the tile-based view to find it visually, instead of doing a search for it. But this feature won't drastically change the way you organize and find your music. ITunes continues to let you browse your music by List view, in which you can see details about your music and videos, and by Cover Flow view, in which you can flip through album covers as if you were using a jukebox.
In its eighth iteration, ITunes remains solid, although it still has both its benefits and its quirks as a media organizer, player, and jukebox. Genius is a useful--and generally well-done--addition, and Grid view may make finding music easier. Aside from that, though, nothing about iTunes 8 is really groundbreaking.
Note: This link takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software. This version works on 32-bit XP and Vista systems only.
--Nick Mediati
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